Millennium Promise

About Us

At Millennium Promise, our vision is the eradication of extreme poverty, hunger, and preventable disease within our lifetime.

Our mission is to provide the operational platform and resource mobilization for the Millennium Villages Project, which empowers communities to lift themselves out of extreme poverty.

We believe that extreme poverty can be cut in half by 2015, even in some of the poorest, most remote places in the world. Through the Millennium Villages Project we are showing how, using a holistic, science-based approach to benefit more than 500,000 people across sub-Saharan Africa.

Farmers cultivating their maize crops in the Millennium Village of Mayange (Rwanda).

We know that to effect lasting change in any one sector, we must improve them all.

Millennium Villages throughout Africa are showcasing… how effective an integrated strategy for health care, education, agriculture, and small business can be. We are seeing how to make the most of new technologies. And we are seeing how empowering women can empower whole societies… If other countries do all that you are doing, we can — and we will — achieve the Millennium Development Goals.

Our Approach

Team Leader David Siriri compares corn grown in depleted soil (left) with corn raise with proper use of fertilizer (right) in the MV of Ruhiira (Uganda).

Millennium Village sites are located in 10 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, each featuring a different ecological and geographic profile. Each site is situated in a relatively remote rural area and was considered a “hunger hot-spot” at the time the Project began.

Since then, we have begun to see what’s possible when the best scientific research is combined with local expertise and the latest technologies. For example, after the first few years of the Project communities have seen promising early results, including:

In addition, our MDG Global Leaders Tommy Hilfiger, Renzo Rosso, and Youssou NDour contribute their passion and support to educate the public and encourage other leaders to join the movement to end extreme poverty.

Our Team

With a team of nearly 1,000 employees across Africa, Millennium Promise is headquartered in New York with regional offices in Dakar, Senegal, and Nairobi, Kenya. Locally staffed site teams collaborate with local communities to drive Project activities and achieve objectives.

Millennium Promise provides the operational leadership for the Millennium Villages Project, alongside science and policy leadership from the Earth Institute at Columbia University.

Together, we are empowering 500,000 people across sub-Saharan Africa with the tools and resources they need to break the cycle of extreme poverty for good.

Students in the Millennium Village of Tiby (Mali). The MVP team works with teachers and parents to ensure that children receive a quality education and attend school every day, especially girls.

Background & Founders

We measure our success by the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the time-bound targets for reducing global poverty agreed to by 189 UN member states in 2000.

In 2005, five years after the Goals were established, an inspired group of people began to see it was time to help mobilize the global community to fulfill these promises. Jeffrey D. Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University and special adviser to the UN Secretary-General on the MDGs, teamed up with Raymond Chambers, a pioneer of private equity investing and a passionate philanthropist, to establish Millennium Promise.

Millennium Promise became the first international non-governmental organization solely committed to supporting the achievement of the MDGs, with a specific mandate to translate the world’s goals into tangible results.